Naturally occurring language as a source of evidence in suicide prevention

We discuss computational language analysis as it pertains to suicide prevention research, with an emphasis on providing non‐technologists with an understanding of key issues and, equally important, considering its relation to the broader enterprise of suicide prevention. Our emphasis here is on naturally occurring language in social media, motivated by its non‐intrusive ability to yield high‐value information that in the past has been largely unavailable to clinicians.     

The Role of School-based Group Mentoring in Promoting Resilience among Vulnerable High School Students

This study examined the role of participation in a year-long school-based group mentoring program, Project Arrive (PA), on increasing resilience during the first year of high school among students identified as being at high risk for school dropout. Participants were 114, ninth grade students taking part in one of 32 PA mentoring groups, and 71 statistically matched comparison students (53% male, 75% eligible for free/reduced-price lunch, 62% Latinx). Using a propensity score with inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to reduce selection bias, and a multi-level model to account for non-independence of data within mentoring groups, we examined changes from pre-test to program exit on seven external resilience resources (developmental supports and opportunities) and four internal resilience assets (personal strengths). At program exit, PA participants had higher adjusted means than comparisons on six external resources, including school support, school belonging, school meaningful participation, peer caring relationships, prosocial peers, and home meaningful participation. PA participants also had higher adjusted means on one internal asset, problem solving. Results point to the promise of group mentoring as an approach for increasing resilience among academically vulnerable adolescents.     

Creative Fixation is No Laughing Matter: The Effects of Funny and Unfunny Examples on Humor Production

How do people come up with humorous ideas? In creative cognition research, exposure to good examples sometimes causes fixation (people get “stuck” on the examples) but other times sparks inspiration (people's responses are more creative). The present research examined the effects of funny and unfunny examples on joke production. A sample of 175 adults read scenarios that they completed with funny responses. All participants were instructed to be funny, but before responding they read (a) funny responses as examples of good responses to emulate, (b) unfunny responses as examples of poor responses to avoid, or (c) no examples. The participants’ own responses were rated for funniness and for similarity to the example responses, and response times were recorded. Reading either funny or unfunny examples, compared to no examples, caused people to come up with funnier jokes. Similarity to the examples was low in all conditions, so fixation was relatively modest, but people who saw unfunny examples spent more time coming up with their responses. Taken together, the findings support the growing literature showing that examples are often inspiring rather than constraining, and they imply that good and bad examples spark creative thought via different paths.     

Experiences of Adults Who Identify as Primary Caregivers

The role of primary caregiver is unique. Understanding the role of the primary caregiver will better inform those in the counseling profession. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to gain a clearer perspective of the lived experiences of adults who identify as primary caregivers. The authors conducted semistructured interviews with 6 Caucasian female participants and analyzed the data using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings include personal perceptions and caregiver experiences pertaining to the caregiver role, caregiver mentality, professional identity, social and emotional responses, and self‐care among caregivers throughout the caregiving process. Implications for counselors and future research are presented.     

Universal stories: How narratives satisfy core motives

Abstract

For millennia, narratives have been a primary mode of oral discourse. Narrative presentation of information has been shown to facilitate interpersonal and group communication. However, research indicates that narratives are more than merely an adaptive mode of communication. Narrative is a fundamental – and perhaps foundational – element of social and cultural life. The present article posits that the centrality of narrative in social life is due to narrative’s ability to help satisfy the five core social motives, as identified by Fiske belonging, understanding, control, self-enhancement, and trust. In so doing, this article reviews empirical and theoretical work examining basic narrative processes, autobiographical narratives, and entertainment narrative consumption to illustrate how narrative thought helps to satisfies core human motives and in turn, how the narrative construction process informs self and identity formation.     

A Case Study of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Within a Varsity Volleyball Team

This study used an instrumental case study approach to investigate the ways teammates within a female varsity volleyball team regulated one another's emotions, the factors that were perceived to influence interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), and athletes' preferences for regulating their own and others' emotions. Fourteen athletes participated in semistructured interviews and reported using a variety of emotion-improving and emotion-worsening IER strategies, in addition to occasionally choosing not to engage in IER, and several factors were found to influence IER (e.g., athletes' roles and interpersonal factors). This study has theoretical implications and applied implications for athletes, coaches, and sport psychology consultants.     

A psychometric comparison of anxiety-relevant attention measures

Background and Objectives: Preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control each purportedly play a key role in anxiety disorders. Divergent psychometric properties among attention measures may produce differential detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes. However, no studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of these attention measures in the same sample.

Design: Eighty-five young adults (M?=?19.41 years, SD?=?1.47, 48 Females) completed a cognitive task battery and a subset of 60 participants (M?=?19.42 years, SD?=?1.48, 33 Females) completed the task battery again approximately two weeks later.

Method: To assess preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control, the cognitive task battery included a dot-probe task, emotion and gender Stroop tasks, and a flanker task. Tasks varied in how attention was directed and if emotional stimuli were included. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were compared across measures.

Results: Within the same sample, internal consistency and reliability differed across attention measures. Explicit attention measures (emotional Stroop and flanker) exhibited stronger internal consistency and greater test-retest reliability compared to implicit measures (dot-probe and gender Stroop).

Conclusions: These results inform clinical research using attention measures to assess anxiety-related differences and treatment response.     

Experiential Avoidance: An Examination of the Construct Validity of the AAQ-II and MEAQ

Experiential avoidance (also referred to as acceptance or psychological flexibility) is a core construct of third-wave behavior therapies. It is the tendency to avoid uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, even when doing so has negative long-term consequences. In order for developments in experiential avoidance and third-wave behavior therapies to continue, it is imperative to examine the construct validity of the most widely used measures of this construct, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire–II (AAQ-II) and the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ). In Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 1,052) and college (N = 364) samples, we evaluated the construct validity of these measures. The AAQ-II demonstrated suboptimal patterns of convergent and discriminant validity with measures of neuroticism/negative affect (Big Five Inventory, Big Five Aspects Scale, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), the MEAQ, and mindfulness (Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire). In contrast, the MEAQ demonstrated optimal convergent and discriminant validity. Factor analyses at the scale, subscale, and item levels demonstrated that the AAQ-II loads with indicators of neuroticism/negative affect and not with other constructs at the core of third-wave behavior therapies. In contrast, the MEAQ loads on factors with mindfulness or forms its own factors. These findings suggest the AAQ-II functions as a measure of neuroticism/negative affect, whereas the MEAQ functions as an indicator of experiential avoidance. These findings have substantial implications for research on experiential avoidance and third-wave behavior therapies. Therefore, in order to improve the theory, research, and practice of third-wave behavior therapies, we recommend using the MEAQ to assess experiential avoidance.     

Looking forward: the effects of photographs on the qualities of future thinking

Future episodic thinking relies on the reconstruction of remembered experiences. Photographs provide one means of remembering, acting as a “cognitive springboard” for generating related memory qualities. We wondered whether photographs would also invite embellishment of future thought qualities, particularly in the presence (or absence) of associated memories. In two studies participants generated future events in familiar (associated memories) and novel (no associated memories) locations. Half of the participants viewed scene location photographs during event generation. All participants then imagined the events for one minute and completed a self-report measure of content qualities. Results of the current set of studies suggested that for novel locations, no differences in qualities emerged; however, for familiar locations, photographs did not enhance qualities and, in some cases, actually constrained perceptual (Experiments 1 and 2) and sensory (Experiment 1) detail ratings of future thoughts. Thus, photographs did not invite embellishment of future thought details.     

Does mediator use contribute to the spacing effect for cued recall? Critical tests of the mediator hypothesis

When study is spaced across sessions (versus massed within a single session), final performance is greater after spacing. This spacing effect may have multiple causes, and according to the mediator hypothesis, part of the effect can be explained by the use of mediator-based strategies. This hypothesis proposes that when study is spaced across sessions, rather than massed within a session, more mediators will be generated that are longer lasting and hence more mediators will be available to support criterion recall. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to study paired associates using either a spaced or massed schedule. They reported strategy use for each item during study trials and during the final test. Consistent with the mediator hypothesis, participants who had spaced (as compared to massed) practice reported using more mediators on the final test. This use of effective mediators also statistically accounted for some – but not all of – the spacing effect on final performance.